


Say What You Mean

by wirewrappedlily



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Curses, Derek is dense, M/M, but at least he's also pretty, the one whereupon Stiles can only speak in bad pick-up lines, true love and that lovely little fairytale, valentine's day fic, we all knew I was gonna do it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 05:32:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wirewrappedlily/pseuds/wirewrappedlily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I keep waiting for him to say 'let's have dinner'." Lydia admitted. </p>
<p>"I could cut myself slapping those cheekbones. Would you like me to try?" Stiles asked Derek poutily and with the proper accent, just to make Lydia laugh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say What You Mean

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day to all of my freaky darlings, but most especially to the king of my heart, Ashton.

It's not so much the silence that tips him off. 

It's more that when Stiles sprints for Lydia, he yells out, "Let's do something that rhymes with 'truck'!" Jackson roars in anger. Lydia and Stiles duck, just in time for a flying piece of machinery to miss taking off their heads by a hair. 

"What?" Derek hisses when it's all done, knowing something has to be wrong. 

"I have a rare tropical disease that will kill me if I don't have sex in the next half hour." Stiles answers, looking like he is going to hang himself with his own tongue. (Derek could've been persuaded to help him.)

"Stiles has been cursed. He can only speak in pick-up lines." Lydia translates, snickering, "And I'll call your dad and tell him you're hanging out with me tonight." 

"If you're down here, who's running Heaven?" 

Lydia gives him an amused, pitying look, reaching for him and pulling him in under her arm to rub her hand through his lengthening hair playfully, like Laura used to with Derek. 

"How the hell did he get cursed?!"

"If I told you have a nice body, would you hold it against me?" 

A part of Derek--the part that had been a big brother, an older cousin, a child under the tutelage of Peter Hale, wanted to agree, simply to mortify him into never speaking to him again. He turned his question to Lydia, biting back a frustrated growl when she sighed and shrugged, "I don't know. He can't actually tell me, and he doesn't answer in the same line of pick-ups, so I don't think he really knows, either. 

"How do we break the curse?" 

Lydia shot him a look Laura would be proud of, eloquent in the shades of his idiocy. "I'm no weatherman, but you can expect more than a few inches tonight." 

Erica stirred, "He needs to have sex." 

"If I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put you and I together." Stiles muttered with a smile, glancing at the last moment from Erica to Derek. 

Erica and Lydia both made a sound of realization, Isaac and Boyd snorting like they'd already figured it out. "What?" 

"Can't just have sex," Lydia began.

"He has to have sex with his one, true love." Erica sighed mockingly, batting her eyelashes as she rolled her eyes. 

"Have we met before? Oh, no, sorry, that was only in my dreams." 

Lydia and Erica looked at each other speculatively on that one, "I keep waiting for him to say 'let's have dinner'." Lydia admitted. 

"I could cut myself slapping those cheekbones. Would you like me to try?" Stiles asked Derek poutily and with the proper accent, just to make Lydia laugh. 

"What?" Derek asked again, feeling out of depth and adrift with the code Stiles seemed to have established so easily with the others. 

"Never mind; you wouldn't get it even if I explained, I'm sure." Lydia huffed, flicking her hair over her shoulder. 

"I don't get why you and I don't get naked."

"I've _seen_ you naked, Stiles." Lydia purred, slipping an arm around his waist and kissing his cheek. They walked towards the exit together, colour burning high in Stiles's cheeks as Lydia teased hm. "It's impressive." Jackson growled again, but Lydia was ignoring him studiously, walking with Stiles back to his Jeep. 

Erica was watching Derek the entire time they left, laughter in her eyes, before melting after them, sliding into the Jeep while Lydia laughed at whatever line Stiles had mumbled to try to ward her off. 

~

"If you were a Pokémon, I'd choose you." Stiles sighed when Derek pressed later, Stiles draped upside down on Lydia's bed, hanging off the edge, and Lydia curled on his thigh, reading. 

Lydia snorted, "That might just be the most-direct approach you've taken yet." 

"What are you talking about?" Derek demanded, confused. 

"Nice jacket, wanna f--" Lydia slapped Stiles as hard as she could in the thigh, just this close to his dangly bits, and Stiles fell off the bed with a girlish wail. 

Derek huffed, and slid back out of the window. 

"Do you know karate, because your body's kickin'." Stiles groaned into the carpet. 

"Babe, there's direct and then there's death wish." 

~

Stiles came bounding up the stairs to Derek's loft with his heart racing, Derek perking up from the book he'd been scouring for a way to get rid of the curse. 

"Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?" Stiles asked breathlessly, before Derek could ask him if he'd broken it. 

"I think at this point I wish I'd never met you." Derek groaned, his head thunking down on his table. 

"Do your legs hurt from running through my dreams all night?" 

"Seriously, go away. There has to be someone other than me who hasn't gotten sick of the pick-up lines. You only just got here and I'm sick of them." 

Stiles scowled, "My love for you is like diarrhea: I just can't hold it in. You must be Jamaican, because you're Jamaican me crazy." Sighing, Stiles left Derek to wonder what the hell he was trying to get at. 

Lydia texted him an hour later to tell him he was an idiot, and didn't follow up to explain exactly how and why.

~

Erica is strategically carpet bombing Isaac and Stiles with flicked chocolate chips when Derek shows up at Stiles's three days later to check on him. 

"Was your dad a baker, because you've got a nice set of buns!" Stiles cackled, catching a chip in his mouth. Erica laughed delightedly, shaking her head as she let up. 

"I don't forgive you for using the 'phasers set to stunning' line. We _need_ to expand your repertoire." 

"If I were a gardener, I'd put your two lips and my two lips together." 

Isaac made a sound of disgusted disbelief, siding over to Erica to resume pelting Stiles with chocolate chips. Most of which he caught in his mouth. 

Derek shook his head and walked away without making his presence known. 

~

"If I followed you home, would you keep me?" Stiles asked Erica lazily as the cavalry came galloping in to save him from the hunters. He'd been drugged and beaten, his smile hazy and his eyes blown; he reached for Erica and Lydia and fell into them, the two of them curling around him with vicious protectiveness. 

Erica kissed the back of Stiles's head, "Of course I would, honey." 

"Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?" 

"Hush now, Stiles. You're safe." Lydia soothed, the two girls walking Stiles out between them, ignoring Derek's wrathful gaze and the hands extended towards him, Isaac and Boyd falling into place; Jackson scampering off to get one of the cars to take him home in. 

It sat wrong on Derek's shoulders, in his gut, that Lydia and Erica had curled around Stiles as they had, but it shouldn't have felt like that, and he couldn't fathom why. Boyd came back quietly, looking expectant, Jackson and Isaac with Stiles and the girls. 

"Look, boss; it's funny and all, but sooner or later, the curse is going to have to break. It'd be best if it were sooner." Boyd told him. 

"What? All the research...Lydia said that it has to be Stiles's one true love or something--sex breaks the curse." 

Boyd shrugged, "Might not be sex. Might just be a kiss, like all those dumbass fairytales. All I'm saying is, you're the only one who can let him off the hook." 

Derek still didn't get it, but he was beginning to feel like everyone was talking in code and he was the only one who didn't have the key. 

~

Derek leapt nimbly up to Scott's window, slipping through when Scott left the room, Isaac asleep under Stiles's head and Lydia and Erica curled on either side of him. Stiles was awake, his left eye swollen almost shut with bruise and his lip busted. Derek found himself caught up in the urge to touch him; to tell himself that Stiles was there and real and safe. It was an ache in the bottom of his ribcage, a swirl of battling thoughts in his head. "They're taking care of you?" Stiles only nodded, "I...I don't know…" Stiles shrugged fluidly, like it hurt to move how he usually would, and the kindness in his eyes was undeserved. The ease in his face was too much. Derek found he couldn't breathe for looking at it, his chest tight and the his head spinning. 

Stiles grunted softly and groaned as he shifted out of the pile more easily than Derek would have thought. Stiles stood up like he was creaking and fragile, his hand bruised and scratched and shaking as he reached for Derek's like Derek would hit him for doing it. Derek's gasping wheezes of breath caught when Stiles picked his hand up and placed it on the side of his neck, pulse steady and strong beneath his palm. "I can't think of anyone else I'd rather survive a zombie apocalypse with." Stiles whispered, expression too earnest for it to be literal. "If I go this way, will I be able to reach your heart?" Stiles asked, pressing into Derek's space, warm and solid and alive, even if he was banged up. 

Derek's will crumbled to the instinct pulling him to touch, drawing Stiles in and holding him as close as he could. It went past just touch the second he gave in, though; Stiles's fingers tightening for the barest moment on his shoulder as he kissed his split lip, then gentled the pressure until it was barely a touch. Stiles crumpled into him with a small sound of relief. 

"Let's have breakfast tomorrow morning," Stiles whispered, "Should I call you, or can I just nudge you?" 

Erica and Lydia stirred enough that they made room for them, Erica curling at Derek's back and Lydia at Stiles's, Isaac reaching down to scrub his fingers through Stiles's lengthening hair. Scott squawked at the sight of the pile on his bed, but Boyd smacked him upside the head and Jackson called him an idiot when they slipped in behind him, Boyd joining Erica and Jackson with Lydia before Isaac beckoned Scott in with him. 

As it turned out, the curse broke when Derek and Stiles got to have their first real kiss, but Stiles managed to keep up the charade in front of Lydia for a week before she caught Boyd laughing too hysterically as he told Derek "If a fat man puts you in a bag at night, don't worry: I told Santa I wanted you for Christmas."


End file.
